THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR GENDER MEDICINE: HISTORY AND HIGHLIGHTS

Edited by Marianne J. Legato, MD and Marek Glezerman, MD

This book is about a major step in the improvement of quality in medicine, namely the long overdue understanding that women are different from men in every system of the body and may require different approaches in diagnosis and treatment. This is not a textbook, nor is it a scientific publication. It is the story of the International Society for Gender and Sex Specific Medicine (IGM) as seen through the eyes of 12 pioneers of Gender and Sex Specific Medicine (GSSM) from 7 countries, five of whom were the founders of IGM in 2006. It describes the development of this new science in the respective countries and academic environments of the authors, their very personal experience while promoting, and implementing their vision of GSSM, their frustrations, successes and achievements. This book is about a major step in the improvement of quality in medicine, namely the long overdue understanding that women are different from men in every system of the body and may require different approaches in diagnosis and treatment. This is not a textbook, nor is it a scientific publication. It is the story of the International Society for Gender and Sex Specific Medicine (IGM) as seen through the eyes of 12 pioneers of Gender and Sex Specific Medicine (GSSM) from 7 countries, five of whom were the founders of IGM in 2006. It describes the development of this new science in the respective countries and academic environments of the authors, their very personal experience while promoting, and implementing their vision of GSSM, their frustrations, successes and achievements.

The field of gender-specific medicine examines how normal human biology and physiology differ between men and women and how the diagnosis and treatment of disease differs as a function of gender and sex. Among the areas of greatest difference are cardiovascular disease, mood disorders, the immune system, cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, obesity, and infectious diseases.This book is essential reading for all researchers, graduate students, practitioners and anyone interested in how this diverse and thriving field. From the early beginning, to the recent NIH mandate that females be included in pre-clinical as well as clinical research and that research results be reported by sex, this quick read will broaden your understanding of the history of the field and highlight where the future is headed.

The book illustrates how major universities and organizations around the world concentrated first on the unexplored world of women’s biology and then progressively adopted the larger view of the importance of investigating and comparing both sexes through all levels of biomedical research notes the recent NIH statement that funding would depend on inclusion of two sexes in scientific protocols wherever possible as an important affirmation of the legitimacy of gender specific science addresses challenges for the future: how to incorporate both sexes in investigative protocols in a scientifically valid way, and whether or not the cost of including two sexes in protocols will be prohibitively expensive.

Dr. Marianne Legato, Professor Emerita of Clinical Medicine at Columbia University is an internationally known academic physician, author, lecturer, and specialist in gender-specific medicine. She is founding member of the International Society for Gender Medicine and also the founder and director of The Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University and its next iteration, The Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine. These enterprises are the first collaborations between academic medicine and the private sector focused solely on gender-specific medicine: the science of how normal human biology differs between men and women and of how the diagnosis and treatment of disease differs as a function of gender and sex. Her ground breaking textbook on Gender-and Sex Specific Medicine has been published in 2017 in the 3rd edition.

She has published extensively on Gender and Sex Specific Medicine, both scientifically and for the lay public. She is also the founding editor of the journal Gender Medicine, and the Journal Gender and Genome, published for the scientific community. In 1992, Dr. Legato won the American Heart Association’s Blakeslee Award for the best book written for the lay public on cardiovascular disease. She is a practicing internist in New York City and has been listed each year in New York Magazine’s “Best Doctors” since the feature’s inception in 1993.